Do not yank the upper case off quickly. The case is attached to the logic board via a ribbon cable.

Lift up at the rear of the case and work your fingers along the sides, freeing the case as you go. Once you have freed the sides, you may need to rock the case up and down to free the front of the upper case.

There are four plastic clips above the DVD slot, and another above and to the left of the IR sensor. These clips can be very difficult to disengage without prying. They can also be difficult to re-engage during reassembly.

Reassembly Tip: Press down firmly on the tip of the top case above the location of each clip until you hear a snap to reseat them in their slots.

Reassembly Tip: The two center DVD clips will rarely snap back into place properly without help, and downward pressure will instead simply deform the frame around the DVD slot. Support the frame by inserting a plastic spudger into the DVD slot directly under the clip location until it is snug, then press down until you hear the snap.

Disconnect the trackpad and keyboard ribbon cable from the logic board, removing tape as necessary.

Note: It is possible to replace the hard drive without disconnecting the keyboard from the chassis, but it will need to be held upright to keep it out of the way, while still allowing you both hands to work on the drive removal. Be careful when removing the keyboard-trackpad ribbon cable to ensure that the rear of the upper case is disengaged from the area near the hinge. It is easy to accidentally bend the screw receivers on either side of the keyboard.

Remove tape as necessary and use a spudger (or carefully push a credit card under the tape) to carefully loosen the adhesive securing the sleep light and IR sensor connectors to the top of the hard drive.

You may find it best to loosen the left edge, then the right edge, then the center of the tape to attack it from all points, so as to gently apply force to the smallest possible sticky surface.

I used the A1260 hard drive replacement guide to swop out a Western Digital Scorpio SATA (WD3200BEVT) 320 Gig 5400rpm for a Western Digital SATA (ST9750420AS) Momentus 750 Gig 7200rpm. (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/product...) The whole operation went flawlessly thanks to the guide. The improvement in speed / access with the bigger, faster hard drive is very noticeable. Just to let people know that the installation of a 750 gig drive is an accomplished fact in a A1260 series MacBook Pro.

Thanks for the very thoroughly and easy-to-follow guide. I'm no technical genius, but thanks to the guide I manage to replace the original disc with a Toshiba THNS 512GG8BBAA. I printed out the instructions and attached the screws with scotch to the right picture as I went along - not a chance of mixing or loosing the screws. It all went well, and the improvement is awesome!

After some trepidation, it all came together flawlessly in about an hour. Great guide, and good advice in the notes about organizing those 27 screws. This will put at least another year of life in my aging Macbook.

Now the MBP is so much faster than before. It's incredible. The first thing is the extremely short boot time and the second is the smooth working, because of the additional RAM and the super fast HDD (Hybrid with 4GB SSD).

Great guide, thanks! I installed a new Seagate 750 Gb drive in about an hour, so finally I can copy my iTunes and iPhoto libraries back to my internal HD :)

There was only one unexpected thing: maybe because my mbp is 3.5 years old now and I've been using it a lot (and thus has spent quite a few hours being quite warm), the tape that secures the IR sensor and the sleep light cable to the top of the drive was almost fused with the plastic sticker that covered the old Fujitsu drive. Eventually I found that sliding a thin, sharp guitar pick under it and thus carefully separating it worked - almost as if cutting it loose.

I used a very dull flat head for the glued wire, it was touch and go, clearly intended to be done by a rep. Thanks for this guide. I just swapped out this old beasts hard drive with a ssd for my wife to use and this guide saved me a lot of headache!!

I want to thank you ifixit for this guide, even if description has been in french, photos are perfect to understand in case of misunderstanding. Everything works fine ! My 2008 MBP is incredibly fast ! Benchmark from XBench is as least 10times more faster for SSD VS my old HD ! Applications launch in 2secs whereas it takes 12 using the HD !

What is the actual max size hard drive (traditional and SSD) you can upgrade to on an A1260? The i fixit store says 1tb but forum posts say 750. There's a lot of good deals right now but I'd like to get max specs. Thanks!

Besides using WD 500GB models, are the WD 640GB and WD 750GB (the 9.5mm thickness model) good to go for? I am still considering as I have heard from other websites on the computer does not draw enough power to power up the 640 and 750 as it has the clicking sound and the rainbow keeps appearing. Anyone has install one before yet?

Please advice. Appreciated! Thanks a million to all the Mac gurus out there!

The two screws removed in step 3 should not be mixed with screws in steps 5 through 7. Though similar, they are actually slightly shorter and have a bigger head. If you put the longer screws back in here when reassembling, the button to unlatch the top will not work properly.

The two screws removed in step 3 should not be mixed with screws in steps 5 through 7. Though similar, they are actually slightly shorter and have a bigger head. If you put the longer screws back in here when reassembling, the button to unlatch the top will not work properly.

I think you may have commented on the wrong page. This page only has 3 steps, and the screws are removed in step 2, not 3.

I'm not sure how the user notes get attached to the various procedures here, but my comment does seem to show up properly when viewing the steps for Hard Drive Replacement. However, the number of the step may be off if viewed as part of another procedure.

Quote from Don:

I think you may have commented on the wrong page. This page only has 3 steps, and the screws are removed in step 2, not 3.

Keep these two Philips screws separate. The screws are approximately 0.5mm shorter in length. When using one or two of the other longer screws in the battery compartment when reassembling, the lid will not open because the screw(s) do yam the lid button.

If you are using a muffin pan to keep removed parts separate (a method I recommend highly), note that Steps 5, 6, and 7 involve removing the same size screw—and thus you can put them all in the same pile. This is unlike just about every other part you will remove during this procedure.

I did the same thing once, and eventually got it out. Try tweezers, a screwdriver, magnets, holding the MBP on its side so gravity is working with you, etc. Eventually the little bugger will come out, you just have to keep working at it.

The clips above the DVD slot (below the deck palm rest) are an absolute bear. They're hard to get released, and even harder to get back locked when you reassemble. (I've read to tilt the deck toward you when reassembling, inserting the front edge first, and press about an inch back from the edge to get all the front clips locked first before lowering the rest (back) of the deck.) No success for me yet, best of luck.

Those clips on the front edge are very challenging. I have a set of nylon pry tools that are for taking apart car dashboards without scratching the vinyl or plastic. I was able to get a long one in from the side and twist it which freed the clips without damaging the plastic on the upper case or the aluminum on the lower case.

Putting it back together presented another challenge. When I first re-assembled it I think I pushed too hard over the DVD slot and accidentally bent the metal down. I was able to bend it back up using a thicker part of those same nylon pry tools, and then i was able to get it snapped back down successfully. Had I known this would happen, I would have just put the nylon tool in the slot to reinforce the metal as I was snapping the case back down.

I had a lot of trouble with getting those clips to lock in place again when reassembling. The way I eventually did it was to wedge something into the front of the CD/DVD slot so that I wouldn't warp the laptop casing. I used the end of a pen; when wedged in the tip of the pen was the right height to not support the casing above and below the CD/DVD slot and not allow it to warp.

I simply ensured the pen was aligned with one particular clip, lifted the laptop slightly, and squeezed the top and bottom edge of the laptop casing very firmly at that point. Each clip clicked in quite easily doing it this way. Just remember to move the pen (or whatever you are using) along to whichever clip you are clicking in.

You're on the right track David. But what works really good is something that gets more surface area contact than the pen--I carefully insert a stack of 3" square post-it notes about 3/8" into the slot. And because they're stacked, you can easily add/subtract post-its to get as tight a fit as possible. Then, assuming you have everything lined up, use quite a bit of downward pressure. You should hear a few snaps as the clips reseat.

Quote from David:

I had a lot of trouble with getting those clips to lock in place again when reassembling. The way I eventually did it was to wedge something into the front of the CD/DVD slot so that I wouldn't warp the laptop casing. I used the end of a pen; when wedged in the tip of the pen was the right height to not support the casing above and below the CD/DVD slot and not allow it to warp.

I simply ensured the pen was aligned with one particular clip, lifted the laptop slightly, and squeezed the top and bottom edge of the laptop casing very firmly at that point. Each clip clicked in quite easily doing it this way. Just remember to move the pen (or whatever you are using) along to whichever clip you are clicking in.

I have none of the problems above just was very careful, but inserting the palm rest in first does most of the work , gently does it looking at the alinement of the clips as you go straight in she goes!

I have taken apart quite a few laptops but this is my first Mac. This confirms my statements, to anyone that will listen, that these are the most "exquisite" machines ever produced. I just performed these HDD Replacement steps and with appropriate fear and trepidation popped the clips off. It would have been very helpful if someone had mentioned that they come straight up. I wasn't sure so I wiggled and (carefully) pried with the spudger until one of them went "POP". The credit card idea was helpful but my card was pretty soft so I didn't dare use it with too much force. When I got the top cover loose I just leaned it back against the screen so as not to take a chance on damaging the cable. Reassembly was according to the notes, but again the spudger was perfect if inserted into the drive slot (careful on the felt!) to support the base of the clips. Thanks to all for the notes. BTW; Prayer helps!

On the top of the case mark the center of each of the four clips that are over the CD slot and the one clip to the left of the latch with a pencil. When re-installing the top case apply pressure over the clip to the left of the latch until you hear a snap. For the four clips over the CD slot, upend the entire case. Then insert the flat end of the spudger into the CD slot under the center of each clip. Apply pressure from the top of the case while providing support with the spudger in the CD slot until the clip snaps in. This will minimize the chances of bending the CD slot which would prevent CDs from ejecting.

Take care reassembling new the DVD drive. It's easy to bend the top piece of metal down (the one that engages the clips) and your DVD can get stuck occasional ejecting. Very annoying. Maybe give it a little prophylactic bend upward. I placed a blunt letter opener in the slot and torqued it, while applying downward pressure from the top deck... This allowed the clips to engage nicely without bending this piece down.

i used a pry tool i had left over from replacing the screen on my iphone, any flat stiff item, like a credit card would work. watch the youtube video linked above, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUonF9OSv..., skip ahead in the video to 4:57 where you see her use a pry tool. I had no problem separating and reassembling this section. Only issue i had was the two screws in the battery area. Only one of them would grab, so I left the other one out.

Here is an additional video showing how to remove the cables for both the left and right fans. At time 2:00 in the video he starts to work on the left fan. This video will help prevent you from attempting to detach the cables incorrectly.

I've opened these up many, many times, and by far the easiest method I have found to disengage the front clips is as follows:

Lift up the top case by the rear corners near the hinge, keep lifting so the top case is tilting towards you. You will feel some resistance, but keep lifting and you will hear the clips disengage with a 'snap'. Doing it this way should not bend the top case metal or loosen the spacing between the top case metal and plastic trim. The clips will not break, they will still engage when you put the top case back on.

It basically takes me 5 or 10 seconds to take off the top case now, and the case goes back on nice and tight as before.

I read that you can actually also use the corner of a credit card. I didn't have a spudger and this worked perfectly for me. If you hold the card quite close to the corner and it has just the right amount of flex.

I chose not to disconnect this ribbon cable. I used a chopstick to prop open the front panel; just gently place in lower right corned of case and upper right corner inside the top panel. Saves the risk of disconnecting.

A hint: to minimize any cosmetic gaps between the edges of the top and bottom case, firmly press down the top case with your fingers, squeezing the cases together at each location while installing the left and right side screws, especially toward the front of the computer.

I got to this step, and to my dismay, I found that the Torx screws on the hard drive retaining bracket, and the new hard drive were NOT T6. The T6 screwdriver just goes around and around in them. Anyone else have this problem, and know the correct size? It was quite a bummer, since I had to reassemble the whole thing without having completed the project.

Update: I bought a new Torx driver kit, and found that it actually IS a T6! I guess there are variations in how Torx screwdrivers fit into the nuts. Anyway, all seems good. My new 640GB drive is happy in its new home.

If you are replacing the HD with a Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM 500 GB Hard Drive be careful not to cover drive's breath hole since the ribbon cable will exactly pass over it (where the sleep light and IR sensor connectors are). You need to paste it a little bit diagonal. Also as roman7927 and welhitamy said, be VERY careful when removing the ribbon cable from the motherboard, I ripped it off too!

I managed to change the hard drive, but with a different aproach on step 10. I did not disconect any of the cables from the motherboard, as I managed to slide the drive out, by lifting it a little, then disconecting only the hard drive cable with the help of the Spudger and slowly out. I think find it safer than removing the delicate conectors from the motherboard. Good luck!

Slow and easy seems to be the key to separating the ribbon cable from the top of the drive. I used an alternating approach, emphasizing first one side and then the other of the cable, especially around the curve. The spudger and a plastic card were both useful here.

I did not need to disconnect the hadrdrive cable from the motherboard. I could carefully plug and unplug the hdd while the cable is still connected to the lower body. Less hassle and less things being able to break.

I used the round pointed part of the spudger (the opposite end of the one pictured in step 10) and started from the part of the cable that wasn't glued to the top of the hard drive. Insert the round pointed part under the bottom of the cable, perpendicular to it, and then roll it towards the glued part on the hard drive. The cable should separate quite easily from the drive . It was much easier doing it this way than using the chisel part of the spudger to separate the cable from the drive.

I was having quite a go as well. This is a great tip. Took some time but nothing bent or broken and all is well =). Try different twirling/spinning techniques and be careful of the ribbon glue sticking to your HDD sticker.

I replaced the 200 GB that came with the A1260 with WD 500GB, 5400 Blue drive. Thanks to this guide. Well written and quite helpful.

After replacing the drive, I did the installation of Mountain Lion while the case is still open. Once I made sure that it is booting and etc., I closed the case. Now the machine never boots. Used the OS DVD to boot and install the OS. Installation log says 'Repairing Volume...'.

In the past three days I went to the store and replaced three HDDs. Why the HDD fails once the case is closed? I am really frustruated. Please help. Thanks.

It's time to speak out for your right to repair

Dear Minnesotans,

Right now, Minnesota has a chance to pass the first Fair Repair bill in the nation.
We have a chance to guarantee our right to repair electronics—like smartphones, computers, and even farm equipment.
We have a chance to help the environment and stand up for local repair jobs—the corner mom-and-pop repair shops that keep getting squeezed out by manufacturers.

We've been working with local repair companies, non-profit refurbishers, and tech-savvy politicians to come up with a solution. And they've done just that — Minnesota is the first state to consider a Fair Repair Bill.

If you agree with us, find out who represents you in the Minnesota House of Representatives.
Tell them you support the bipartisan Fair Repair Bill, HF 1048. Tell them that you believe repair
should be fair, affordable, and accessible.